Imagine

Edward Hogg plays a teacher at a school for the blind in Lisbon in Andrzej Jakimowski’s inventive and lyrical account of a world centred on everyday sound.

Even if a screening is sold out, tickets are often available 30 minutes before the start of the film at the box office at each venue.


Image gallery

  • Director-Screenwriter Andrzej Jakimowski
  • Producer Andrzej Jakimowski, Vladimir Kokh, François d’Artemare
  • With Edward Hogg, Alexandra Maria Lara, Melchior Derouet
  • Poland-France-Portugal 2012
  • 105 mins
  • PG
  • Production company ZAiR

Ian (Edward Hogg), a specialist in spatial orientation, arrives to work at a school for the blind in Lisbon. Blind himself, he teaches his students to move around without using their white canes, encouraging them to risk the unknown through the use of a complex network of sound cues. Among them is the beautiful Eva (Alexandra Maria Lara), who he attempts to bring out of her shyness and seclusion, leading toward an unspoken romance. Written and directed by Andrzej Jakimowski, whose previous film Tricks enjoyed wide international success, Imagine is poetic storytelling of a high order. Like Tricks, it is set against a sunny and lyrical background but also depends greatly on the use of sound which, apart from its aesthetic role, forms an integral part of the theme. Hogg and Lara provide a charismatic presence in a work of unusual sensitivity.
Peter Hames

Director statement

Imagine. Why this title? The film’s central character, Ian, works with blind patients. As a spatial orientation instructor, his job is to teach his patients to get around independently. That usually means learning how to use a white cane. However, Ian is not an ordinary teacher. He teaches blind people how to perceive space: literally. How to perceive the physical shape of objects and their location in space. One of his unique techniques is echolocation. His students – like dolphins and bats – learn to hear the echoes of sounds reflecting off objects. Is Ian capable of developing any remarkable abilities in his students? No – and he’s not even interested in doing so. When we watch him work with his patients – mainly children – we’re struck by something completely unexpected. The exercises Ian offers don’t develop the senses of hearing, touch, smell, balance or any other forms of sensory perception. His exercises require the development of something much more important: imagination. I wrote Imagine after several months’ research into spatial orientation techniques used by blind people. I find some of their methods poetic and absolutely cinematic at the same time.
Andrzej Jakimowski

Director biography

Born in Warsaw in 1963, the director, screenwriter and producer has seen both of his first two features handsomely rewarded on the festival circuit. His debut feature Squint Your Eyes won the Main Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival, while Tricks won over 30 awards at international film festivals from Venice to Kiev, via Miami, and was released theatrically in over 35 countries.

Filmography

2003 Zmruz oczy (Squint Your Eyes)
2005 Solidarnosc, Solidarnosc... [ep Bag only]
2007 Sztuczki (Tricks)
2012 Imagine